The coalescing Seattle twilight was an interplaying illusion of dusk and haze, warm colours replacing the pastel skylines, only to be painted over by the deep indigo eventide. The local rustic town café was already closing up, and they barely had time to finish the last bites of their chocolate bonbons and sip the remaining drops of their hazelnut vanilla frappé, before the intermittent barista ushered them out—quite literally, with a tremulous hand and an apologetic jilted demeanour. Now they stood outside the establishment in introspective reverie, dimmed bronze sodium streetlight the only solitary light source that resiliently pierced through the caliginous melancholy.

She was a blushing rose, liquid and pale, every infinitesimal detail somehow magnified to be remarkably interesting. Fragrance of baby’s breath and frankincense, posture of a regal and sophisticated monarch, delicate face as that of an angel’s glimpse of paradise, personality of an intricate vintage lock and a million exploding suns. Her companion, admittedly, was a person of less enigma, yet was still a character of significance, an oakwood branch, roughly-hewn and intense, simple yet charismatic. That svelte and cheeky-looking fellow had untidy coffee-tint hair, a discursive ironic smirk, an insouciant slouch, and a steely glint that, more often than not, signalled trouble.

As the fog and the regent shadows further intensified, the pauses and discomfited silence between them further attenuated. Moments passed. Her candyfloss-pink sundress fluttered like a jaded butterfly as she tucked a frayed bookmark behind her seashell ear, and her taciturn companion watched her intently, like an engrossed pawnbroker. Without permission, he began to remove his worn tan overcoat and gingerly placed the article over her cool shoulders, still warm and cosy by his own body heat. Flustered by the uncalled attention, she turned away to brush a stray raven hair back into her gossamer tufted bun, and lost grip of her book of poems, fragile pages yellowed and dogeared with age. Sylvia Plath’s ancient anthology dropped with a soft thump right side up, opening uncannily on the centre page containing Mad Girl’s Love Song, and both bent down and fumbled clumsily to pick it up in haste.